Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on Thursday wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind, requesting him to accept the State government’s recommendation in September 2018 and pass orders to remit the life sentences of all the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
Mr. Stalin said the convicts — S. Nalini, Murugan, Santhan, A.G. Perarivalan, Jayakumar, Robert Payas and P. Ravichandran — should be released immediately.
DMK MP T.R. Baalu handed over the letter to the President’s Office on Thursday. In the letter, copies of which were released by the government to the media, Mr. Stalin pointed out that the convicts had spent three decades in prison.
“These seven persons have already suffered untold hardship and agony in the past three decades and have paid a heavy price. There has already been an inordinate delay in the consideration of their pleas for remission,” he said.
He recalled that Nalini's original death sentence was commuted under Article 161 of the Constitution, while the Supreme Court commuted the death sentence of other three convicts to that of life imprisonment.
